A freezer at a PetSmart location in Arizona. Oscar C, a current PetSmart employee at the store, said this freezer is filled with two month's worth of dead animals due to understaffing.
Since the private equity firm BC Partners acquired PetSmart in a $8.7 billion leveraged buyout in 2014, four PetSmart employees say that cost-cutting in the form of severe understaffing, the consolidation of jobs, a lack of sufficient job training, and denial of veterinary care and proper habitats for animals has meant that pets are falling sick, forgoing treatment, and dying at alarming rates in their stores, where freezers and coolers, in some cases, are literally “overflowing” with dead pets. Motherboard obtained photos of freezers stuffed to capacity with dead hamsters, lizards, and other animals. In one case, an employee said dead animals had been in the freezer for 10 months. Abegale Fernandes, a 34-year-old former PetSmart manager in Barnstable, Massachusetts, who quit in December, said this happened because stores were so understaffed that no one qualified to do so could take the deceased animals to the vet for cremation.“The amount of death and loss was unacceptable.”
A cooler filled with deceased animals at a PetSmart store in California. The photo was taken on December 14, 2021.
A freezer at a PetSmart store in California. The photo was also taken on December 14, 2021. A worker said the freezer hadn’t been emptied since February 2021.
On Feb. 28, the national retail advocacy group United For Respect and the animal rights organization World Animal Protection published testimonials detailing stories of unsafe working conditions and animal deaths at some PetSmart stores. The organizations are demanding that BC Partners, PetSmart’s owner, meet with workers on United For Respect’s PetSmart worker committee, a group that formed to fight for higher wages and benefit increases at PetSmart. To date, no PetSmart stores in the United States have unionized.Five current and former PetSmart employees at different stores said that PetSmart managers regularly deny veterinary care for sick and diseased pets because of how much it would cost. Motherboard shared photos with PetSmart; the company did not directly address them.
Joy Potts, a former PetSmart employee who worked in the pet care department in Murfreesboro, Tennessee for two years and quit in August, described a traumatic experience she had watching a guinea pig slowly die from an ear infection without treatment. “We noticed this guy had a noticeable head tilt,” Potts said. “That’s a big indicator of ear infection. Ear infections are common in small animals and notoriously fatal.”Potts provided an image of the guinea pig. She said she and her colleagues named the guinea pig Igor, and they cared for him as his body began to deform. Eventually, the guinea pig was euthanized.“So many people are experiencing burnout. It feels like people’s souls are being drained,” said Potts. “People going into PetSmart should know the company doesn’t view pets as animals. They view them as products. When businesses apply numerical value over moral value, you see lots of abuse. If you care about animals, until they change, this is the type of business you don’t want to engage with.”“It wasn’t about their health. It’s about how quickly we can get this animal to a sellable point.”
The guinea pig with the ear infection that was euthanized in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
A koi fish with cotton fungus at the PetSmart in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Cotton fungus is a condition that affects fish with weak immune systems.
A fish tank at the PetSmart location in Howell, Massachusetts, where large shipments of fish have perished upon entering the tank system, according to current associate Isabela Burrows.
Litt, the spokesperson for PetSmart said that PetSmart employees have several channels for reporting concerns, including an anonymous call center and the option to report to the store or regional managers.For more than two years, the national retail worker advocacy group United For Respect has been campaigning to improve conditions at PetSmart. In September 2021, United For Respect published a report with findings that dog deaths at PetSmart had doubled since BC Partners acquired the retailer in 2015. At least, 36 dogs have died in PetSmart’s care since 2015 compared with 15 deaths between 2008 and 2014, according to the report. Under BC Partner’s watch PetSmart has been cited or fined for violating animal welfare or health and safety laws in Colorado, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia, and Vermont. PetSmart did not provide any more context about these cases when asked for comment. In December, more than 5,000 advocates signed a petition demanding BC Partners guarantee $15 an hour, healthcare for all employees, at least two weeks of severance pay for all employees, and worker representation on the board of directors. United For Respect says that so far, BC Partners has not responded to their requests. BC Partners did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.“My son said ‘hey mom, the snakes look like tennis balls.’ I said ‘they look like tennis balls because they’re so cold.’ My kids were horrified.”
PetSmart employees that Motherboard spoke to also claim the company does not sufficiently prepare for power outages that can endanger animals at their stores, and in several cases, they said animals have died en masse as a result of power outages caused by inclement weather.In late October, a Nor’easter storm wiped out the power at the PetSmart store in Barnstable, Massachusetts, for four days, according to a complaint filed with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Workers were expected to unload semi-trucks and stock the store by light of their cell phones. Without light or heat for 24 hours, many reptiles that do best at 90 degrees were in danger of dying, but PetSmart did not supply a power generator for the store, instead providing winter hand warmers for workers to place on reptile tanks, the OSHA complaint states. The complaint has not yet received a determination from OSHA, and PetSmart did respond to an opportunity to offer more context about the complaint.
Abegale Fernandes, a former PetSmart employee in Massachusetts, brought three reptile habitats to her house during an extended power outage at her store in October.
